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- _.. 1 University Bulletins Series 5, Number 15 
Copy * ■ 



THE OUTLOOK 

FOR THE LIVE STOCK 

INDUSTRY IN OHIO 



BY 



THOMAS F. HUNT, 

Dean of the College of Agriculture and Domestic Science, 
Ohio State University. 



EXCERPT FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF 
THE FIFTY-SIXTH ANNUAL STATE 
AGRICULTURAL CONVENTION. 



4fa> 



COLUMBUS 

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 

APRIL, 1901 

Entered at the Postoffice at Columbus, Ohio, as Second-Class Matter. 



SF" 5 



THE OUTLOOK FOR 
THE LIVE STOCK INDUSTRY IN OHIO. 



During the first half of this century, Ohio and Kentucky, but especially Ohio, 
was the center of the live stock trade in America. Let us pause here and turn 
back the pages of history to July 13, 1787, when the Congress of Confederation, as- 
sembled in New York City, enacted the famous ordinance of the Northwest Terri- 
tory. Just fifteen days after this memorable ordinance was enacted, Congress 
passed an act, which disposed of five million acres of land in Ohio at about ten 
cents per acre. One and one-half million acres of this land went to the Ohio Company, 
which the next year established the first permanent settlement in Ohio at the mouth 
of the Muskingum river. Three and one-half million acres were said to have been 
"for private speculation in which many of the principal characters of America 
were concerned," and out of which grew the famous Scioto Company, called by Mc- 
Master, the first great land job of the Republic. 

The same Congress granted to John Cleve Symmes two million acres between 
the Little and Great Miamis. By every art known to the land agent, the tide of 
immigration into the Ohio Valley was swelled into a torrent. The canvas-covered 
wagon with the sign "To Marietta on the Ohio" carried so much of the fresh, young, 
able blood of the East as to create alarm. One authority estimates that ten thou- 
sand immigrants went by Marietta in 1788. In the East anti-emigration pam- 
phlets were issued. One of. these represented a stout, ruddy, robust, well-dressed 
man on a fat, sleek horse, with the label, "I am going to Ohio," meeting a pale 
and ghastly skeleton of a man, scarcely half dressed, on a wreck of what was 
once a horse, with a label, "I have been to Ohio." 

The Muskingum, the Scioto and the Miami Valleys were soon populated and 
very productive they proved to be, but it was necessary to do something besides 
produce. It was necessary to sell. To wagon flour over the Allegheny Mountains 
on almost impassable roads to New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, was largely 
out of the question. 

When that band of forty-seven immigrants landed on the bank of the Mus- 
kingum and thus began the first permanent settlement of Ohio, Louisiana was a 
Spanish territory, and New Orleans was a considerable and thriving town, cut 
off, however, from trade with the Ohio Valley by Spanish arms, which guarded 
the Mississippi river. 

On the year before the Indiana side of the Ohio was permanently settled, a 
general, and of course a colonel, of Kentucky, by name James Wilkinson, deter- 
mined to raise this embargo, which by diplomacy, that is, by downright lying, 
he succeeded in doing, and in January, 1788, twenty-five flat boats loaded with 
flour, bacon, tobacco, butter and hams, guarded by one hundred and fifty armed, well 
drilled and officered men. moved out into the Ohio and floated down the Missis- 

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sippi river to the Crescent City. Thus opened a hazardous but profitable trade 
to the Ohio valley settlers. It was long before the days of steamboats. To float 
liatboats down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was sufficiently hazardous, but to 
walk back through a wild, and sometimes hostile, country was a task only for 
adventurous and courageous men. There was, however, no lack of men willing to 
strive for the profits, and the trade grew to tremendous proportions, which con- 
tinued until after the war of 1812. 

With the amazing immigration into and the development of the Ohio valley it 
was not many years before the supply exceeded the demand, and it was seen that 
some other outlet must be found. At this juncture George Renick, of Ross Coun- 
ty, proposed driving fat beeves to the Eastern seaboard. In 1805 he crossed the 
Alleghenies with sixty-eight head of fat steers, and drove them into Baltimore 
in good condition, selling them at a profit. Thus a new industry started, which, 
as the flour trade with New Orleans had formerly done, grew with great rapidity, 
and continued for many years. In 1817 Felix Renick drove one hundred head of 
fat steers through to Philadelphia, receiving for them one hundred and thirty-four 
dollars per head. A year later George Renick drove through to New York the first 
Western cattle ever seen there, which sold for sixty-nine dollars per head. 

The Virginia practice of grazing cattle and fattening them out of doors with 
shock corn was transplanted to this soil and climate, and thus became a fixed cus- 
tom of American agriculture. Imported with this practice from Virginia were 
some English cattle, which, subsequently exerted a far-reaching influence. They 
had much to do in making the Ohio valley the cradle of shorthorn breeding in 
America. Many were the importations of shorthorn cattle into this region, but 
none were more noteworthy, perhaps, than those of the Ohio Importing Com- 
pany, a company formed in 1833 by about fifty men of the Scioto valley, in which 
Felix and George Renick were again the leading spirits. In 1836 this com- 
pany sold at public auction forty-three imported shorthorns at an average of eight 
hundred and three dollars and twenty-five cents. In 1837 the same company sold 
fifteen head at an average of one thousand and seventy-one dollars and sixty-five 
cents. 

There is not time in a brief talk of this kind to trace the rise and decadence 
of the dairy industry on the Western Reserve; to tell of the legacy that the farm- 
ers of southwestern Ohio, through the establishment of Poland-China swine and 
the merchants of Cincinnati through the establishment of packing houses, be- 
queathed to the swine industry of America, nor is there time to do credit to the 
sheep breeders of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. In 1850 nearly one- 
fifth of all the sheep raised in the United States were raised in Ohio. 

In 1825 the national road was completed into eastern Ohio. In 1832 the Ohio 
and Erie canal had been built from Portsmouth to Cleveland. The first railroad 
was built in Ohio in 1836. In 1852 eight hundred and ninety miles of railroad 
were in operation. These agencies gave the Ohio farmer a market, and right well 
did he take advantage of it. It was the days of great prosperity for the Ohio 
farmer. The eastern farmer, on his relatively poor and high-priced land, suffered 
severely by this competition. 

But silently as a thief in the night new factors arose to steal away the Ohio 
farmer's trade. The railroads had pushed their way into the fertile and treeless 
plains that for ages had lain ready for the plow. On these prairies countless 
herds could be pastured without cost for land. By 1850, the mower; by 1860, the 
reaper; by 1880, the self -binding harvester, made possible a development of the 
West, the like of which the world had never before seen. With it came millions of 
bushels of oats and corn, and millions of tons of hay and straw, which before 
they had any practical value must be turned into animal product. With the con- 



— 3 — 

solidation of the railroads in the great transcontinental lines, and with the es- 
tablishment of steamboat navigation upon the lakes, the live stock industry of Ohio 
suffered from the same fierce competition of the West that the Eastern farmer 
had been suffering from his Ohio neighbor. The prostration would have been 
much more serious had it not been for the unparalleled local markets, which the 
farmers of Ohio enjoy. Those farmers, who realized the change in the situation and 
adjusted their business to meet it, however, in the last quarter of the century, have 
gotten along comfortably, and some have made considerable money, but with many 
who did not the story has been different. Such is the very brief and very inade- 
quate sketch of the live stock industry of Ohio in the past. What of its future? 

Every one knows, who is at all conversant with the live stock industry of this 
country, that the blood of the live stock man has again begun to boil. During the 
past year some of the old records in the way of prices have been smashed and new 
ones made; breeding cattle selling in four figures is again a common occurrence. 
In December, at Chicago, a carload of premium steers at public auction sold for 
lifteen dollars a hundred. The well-named steer, "Advance," champion at the 
International Live Stock Exposition, sold at public auction for one dollar and fifty 
cents per pound, or for two thousand one hundred and forty-five dollars. No one 
claims the steer was worth this money for beef, but it was in no sense a fictitious 
price. It is an indication of the times. It strikes me as very significant that men daily 
ship cream, and sometimes milk, through Columbus to be used in the retail trade 
of Pittsburg. A gentleman has recently been trying to establish a milk-condensing 
company in Columbus. He is a commission merchant from Philadelphia. He 
claims that he is interested in establishing a factory in order that he may have 
more condensed milk to sell in Philadelphia. If this be true (1 do not assert it is 
true), it is very significant. 

Is this only a boom? It certainly is a boom, and a boon as well to the 
live stock man. Is the boom going to burst? Let us get right close to this sub- 
ject for a moment. Here is a chart that shows the number ot domestic animals 
in the United States yearly for the past thirty years according to the estimates 
of the United States Department of Agriculture. With these figures I have con- 
nected the census returns for 1860. (Here the speaker traced the course taken 
by each class of domestic animals as shown on the chart.) It is here only neces- 
sary to recall that in 1870 the United States had not yet recovered from the 
effects of the most disastrous civil war of modern times. It would be intensely 
interesting to trace the progress of the live stock industry daring the past thirty 
years. Time, however, forbids. I must ask you to take it in at a glance. This 
line (pointing to the population line) shows that the increase, in population 
has been practically uniform since 1870. In order to compare this increase of pop- 
ulation with the decrease of live stock, I have added the number of sheep and swine 
together and divided the sum by five. The result I have added to the num- 
bers of horses, mules, milch cows and other cattle. The sum is what I call 
animal units. A glance at the upper line shows that the number of live stock 
began to increase sharply in 1875. From that year up to 1892 the live stock of 
the United States increased more rapidly than the population. Whatever the 
causes of this increase, it was made possible by the development of the vast coun- 
try west of the Mississippi river, an area considerably over twice as large as that 
east of the Mississippi. Now observe what happened. 

In 1892 we had the largest supply of live stock we have had in forty years. 
Now we have the least. Do you see it? Are you awake to what this means? 
Is it any wonder that the live stock man's blood boils? The comparatively slow 
increase from 1875 to 1892 and the rapid decrease in the past eight years are 



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significant facts. Not only is the home demand increased by virtue of the in- 
creased population, but the foreign demand has been increased as well. 

Here is an instructive table, it shows our exports of animals and animal 
products and of bread stuffs in millions of dollars for five-year periods : 

Animal Products. Bread Stuffs. Total. 



1871-75 


347 


535 


882 


1876-80 


620 


848 


1,468 


1881-85 


681 


782 


1,463 


188G-90 


616 


698 


1,214 


1891-95 


872 


909 


1,781 


189G-00 


1.012 


1,210 


2,222 



I have purposely avoided values in this discussion, because values are often 
misleading. We are sometimes the richest in worldly goods when they are worth 
the least. It is no matter whether a given rib roast cost sixty cents or one dol- 
lar, it will serve the same number of guests. The animal values of the live stock of 
the United States during the past half of the century would not furnish a true 
guide for predicting the future. In like manner, the value of our exports is not an 
exact guide to our foreign trade. Export trade may be increased by the rise in prices 
abroad or a fall of prices at home. It is, however, impracticable to give the ex- 
ports in quantities. I, therefore, give them in values with the caution indicated. 

Comparing the first half of the "seventy" decade with the last half of the pres- 
ent decade, it will be seen that animals and animal products increased about three 
times, while bread stuffs increased less than two and one-half times. The export 
of bread stuffs tends to withdraw from domestic consumption products which 
either directly or indirectly would otherwise be used in producing animal products. 
It is worthy of notice here that the annual export of animals and animal products 
during the past five years has been eqaul to one-tenth the v a.lue of all animals 
to be found any January first upon the farms in the United States during the same 
period. 

This is all very well, but I do not yet see where the Ohio man comes in. Do 
you? Of course, if the Ohio man is not in it somehow, this discussion is of no use 
or 1 have got an audience under false pretenses. It is obvious from what I have 
shown that there is a scarcity of animal products in the United States. Are 
we in danger of a meat famine? By no means. The demand will cause the sup- 
ply to be created. Will meat products be again as cheap as before? In this 
revival of the live stock industry will the Ohio farmer suffer the same fierce, un- 
equal competition that has been his lot during the past twenty-five years? 

On Sunday, July 2, 1899, I stood on the bathing pavilion of Saltair in the 
great Salt Lake, gazing over the most desolate and dead country I had ever seen. 
It was Charles Dickens who said that there was nothing deader than a door nail, 
except a coffin nail, but Charles Dickens had never seen the Great Salt Lake and 
its surrounding territory I said to myself, I do not understand how any body 
of people, religious fanatics though they be, could ever have settled in such a 
desolate place. Imagine my surprise when I subsequently found it stated that for- 
merly "more than one hundred thousand acres of land that were as inviting to 
look upon as possible were spread in plain view of all the people of Zion ; deep 
soil of finest texture and of such fertility that the first crops were marvellous, 
were finally brought under systems of costly canals; villages with school houses, 
churches, stores and fine residences sprung up at close intervals, and there were 
more town sites located than there are buildings to show for them at the present 
time." Life and death go hand in hand. The life-giving water used to irrigate 



— 6 — 

these lands took with it the deadly "alkali" which has proven the destruction of 
so much of the choicest lands of the irrigated sections. 

In one of the railroad circulars, put out for the edification of the traveling 
public, occurs the following language: "Immediately after leaving Ogden, the 
route lies through a valley made productive through irrigation. Next the trav- 
eler obtains a splendid view of Great Salt Lake, and afterwards comes the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains with varied scenery, unrivaled for picturesqueness and grandeur." 
Only those who have traveled on the fast express train two days and a night or 
two nights and a day through the frightful desert that lies between the Great 
Salt Lake and the Sierra Nevada Mountains can fully appreciate the charming 
omissions in this railway description. Our party left Salt Lake City Sunday 
night, and Monday morning we were still in western Utah. As I looked out upon 
this country, which, except for sage brush, seemed to contain neither vegetable nor 
animal life, I was sore puzzled. I said to myself, and then I repeated it to others, 
"I do not understand how the forty-niner ever could have followed this trail. 
There is absolutely nothing here upon which either man or beast could subsist." 
In my youthful impetuosity I stormed up and down the Pullman car repeating 
this statement with variations. After I had been allowed to display my igno- 
rance sufficiently, a well-informed gentleman said to me, "When the forty-niner 
came through here the grass was knee high." I looked at him in amazement; not 
a spear of grass is now to be seen. "Right here in this country we are now pass- 
ing through was formerly the feeding ground of the sheep of Utah. They are now 
up in the mountains," he next remarked. If possible, I looked at him in greater 
amazement. "Now," said he, "I will explain this matter to you," and this in 
substance is what he told me: First came the cattle man, who ranged his cat- 
tle over this country and sought to control it by buying comparatively small tracts 
of land wherever water could be obtained. If a ranchman owned the water privi- 
leges he was in safe possession as against any other cattle man, of thousands of 
acres, it may be, that were tributary to the water. The cattle man, however, soon 
found to his sorrow that he was not in safe possession of this land as against the 
sheep man. Sheep will go much longer and farther without water. A physician, 
who was also financially interested in stock, asserted to me that they would go 
thirty days without water. Be this as it may, it has been abundantly proven that 
they can pasture clear around the cattle man's water privileges. This is death 
to the cattle man's interest. In the first place, it is well known that cattle will 
not follow large bodies of sheep; in the second place, the sheep eat the grass too 
short. But these are the least important things. It does sometimes rain out 
there. When it does rain, the soil gets a soft, adobe mud, quite different from 
Eastern mud. Sheep must, of course, continue to eat whether it is wet or dry, and 
eating as they do with an upward lift, when the soil gets into this soft condition 
they pull up the grass by the roots. Where the forty-niner found the grass knee 
high, where only a few years ago thousands of cattle and tens of thousands of sheep 
fed, the country is a barren waste, which does not now even support jack- 
rabbits, sage hens or rattlesnakes. 

All men may not agree as to the details as they were related to me, nor can 
I lay any claim to having made adequate observations of a country which is 
considerably larger than all of the United States east of the Mississippi river by 
going twice across it on a limited train. The following table, however, from the 
statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture, shows the extent to 
which sheep have displaced cattle in the country west of Denver: 



"WESTERN UNITED STATES IN MILLIONS. 





Cattle. 


Sheep. 


1875 


1.6 


8.2 


1880 


2.3 


12.9 


1885 


5.6 


18.9 


1890 


8.2 


20.8 


1895 


7.6 


19.5 


1900 


5.9 


24.8" 



This table shows that while sheep have increased less than twenty percent, 
other cattle than milch cows have decreased over twenty-eight percent in this 
Western country. Or, to put it another way, while cattle have decreased two and 
three-tenths millions, sheep have increased four millions. Of course four million 
sheep does not begin to compensate for the loss of two and three-tenths millions 
cattle. 

Other consequences are quite as important to the future of that country as the 
loss of live stock. The sheep industry there is thoroughly nomadic. The sheep 
herder with his covered wagon, his cooking outfit, his dogs and his gun, is a man 
without any fixed habitation ; pays nothing for the use of the land ; contributes 
nothing to the taxes or life of the state. An Eastern man, it was asserted, grazes 
one-tenth of the state of Wyoming by means of these nomadic herdsmen and boasts 
that he would not own a foot of land in the state, not even a town lot. His 
money is spent in the east, while the hen that lays the golden egg is being de- 
stroyed in Wyoming. On the other hand, it is asserted that the cattle ranchman 
had, by necessity, a fixed habitation, paid taxes, was a part of the life of the state 
in which he made his money and had an incentive to improve its conditions. 

There is also a humanitarian side to this subject. In many cases, perhaps the 
majority of cases, no provision is made for the sheep on the ranges, even in the 
coldest weather. In the winter of 1899 one man lost six thousand sheep from 
starvation. A meeting of sheep men was subsequently held to devise means of 
avoiding such disasters hereafter. This man, when approached upon the subject, 
said, "No, sir, I am no fodder man. I am a sage brush man.*' It was cheaper, 
he thought, to let the sheep starve, therefore starve they must. 

The condition in the state of Nevada, which is probably an extreme case, and 
perhaps not yet typical of other states, may be cited to bring the situation home 
to the eastern mind. Nevada in the past has had three sources of wealth, viz., 
pasture, lumber and mining. I have told what has become of much of her pas- 
ture on the lower levels. There is still left some pasture higher up in the moun- 
tains. 

I rode one afternoon, going from Lake Tahoe to Carson City, down the east- 
ern slope of the Sierra Nevada for perhaps ten miles along a flume, which had 
formerly been used in transporting timber to the box factory at Carson City. No 
logs now floated down the flume — the box factory was closed. The boxes were no 
longer made for lack of timber from which to make them. Standing in Reno, the 
principal town in the state, I looked out upon the mountains and said, "¥our 
mountains here do not seem to bear any timber." "Mackey, the lumber king, had 
two hundred and fifty men four years cutting timber in sight of this town," was 
the reply. It is perhaps needless here to remark that the affecting of the water supply 
is not the least of the consequences which have followed the destruction of these 
mountain forests. 

In going from Carson City to Reno our train made a stop where I subsequently 
learned was once a thriving mining town of two thousand inhabitants. Not a 
sign of a dwelling is now to be seen. With its three principal sources of wealth 



— 8 — 

gone or reduced, it is not surprising that the state should be decreasing in popu- 
lation. 

Will this country, which has been so ruthlessly destroyed, be again made pro- 
ductive? I sincerely trust so. It is to the interests of the whole country that 
it should be. Already, as the result of the splendid researches of investigators, meth- 
ods are being advocated to remove the deadly ''alkali" which has been such a demon 
to irrigation. Men, who have given the subject the most careful study, believe 
that much of the arid ranges can by a proper system of husbandry be made pro- 
ductive again. I am not one of those who finds satisfaction in the misfortune of 
his neighbor. I believe that the general government should, if need be, do what 
it can by wise legislation to help this country to a new prosperity. I do not 
know whether any of the particular forms of legislation that have been proposed 
are wise or not, nor do I know what would be wise legislation, but I am sure that 
no selfish interests should be allowed to stand in the way of a judicious and help- 
ful development of that great section. There must be in this country no north, 
no south, no east, no west. This is aside, however. It has been my purpose to 
trace some of the larger economic conditions so far as they relate to the live stock 
interests of this country. In order that we should understand the future it has 
been necessary for me to state the conditions as they exist. 

We started in on the Atlantic seaboard over two hundred and fifty years 
ago to subdue the continent. In 1800 the United States territorially nowhere 
crossed the Mississippi river and nowhere touched the Gulf of Mexico, much less 
had our agriculture and civilization reached these limits. By 1850 we had ac- 
quired our present continental limits, Alaska excepted, but the great west and 
northwest was agriculturally an undiscovered country. In the past fifty years we 
have swept the continent with our agricultural operations. In 1875 central Iowa 
was yet a wilderness. This map shows how rapid was the live stock industry 
west of the Mississippi between 1875 and 1890 and how it has declined since that 
time. For two hundred and fifty years we have been able to practice a system 
of highway-robbery agriculture. The highwaymen's business was profitable while 
it lasted. During the first half of the century the Ohio valley states with their 
fresh lands sorely tried the eastern farmers. During the last half of the century 
the states west of Chicago have enjoyed an immense economic advantage and the 
Ohio valley farmers have in turn suffered from this competition. But we have 
now reached the Pacific coast. The old conditions seem to be forever gone. There 
are no longer cheap but valuable lands between Chicago and Denver. The cream 
has already been taken off of the lands west of Denver. There the live stock in- 
dustry has already reached its highest pioneer development and has declined. It 
is not my purpose to prophesy, but it would now seem that we have come face 
to face with a new situation. The western farmer can no longer raise cattle so 
nearly free from cost. This is a situation that every thoughtful man has known 
would come sooner or later, but it has come upon us so suddenly as to be almost 
sensational. In the new era of live stock development, which is now so manifestly 
in progress, it would seem that the eastern farmer is no longer to wear the handi- 
cap which he has worn during the last half of the last century. The young man 
of Ohio with fifty years before him faces a different situation so far as the rear- 
ing of live stock is concerned than did his father fifty years ago. Live stock will, 
of course, be cheaper. The present demand will create a supply, which will bring 
prices down again, but in the competition that follows for a share of this trade 
the Ohio farmer now has a somewhat equal advantage, and in the way of local 
markets, a superior advantage. He is no longer to suffer from the fierce competi- 
tion incident to the pioneer development of the West. 




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